Thursday, June 17, 2010

In a letter earlier this month to Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson [formerly of New Jersey] wrote that the pesticide Propoxur could pose health risks for children, harming their nervous systems. and thereby did not allow the state of Ohio to be applied in bedbug-ridden homes.

AP noted that Susan Jones, an entomologist at Ohio State University, said the EPA likely overestimated the risk of exposure to children and said an effort was under way to provide the agency with information about how much of the pesticide would become airborne if applied in homes.

While the EPA said its conclusions about Propoxur are based on "the best available science," one wonders if Jackson is "in touch" with the problems bed bugs have caused in New Jersey.

As to "innovation," one sees that a useful product can be blocked from "changing the way we live" by administrative rule.

Lisa Jackson might contemplate an article published in the Newark Star-Ledger about three years ago [by MEG NUGENT , 17 July 2007, p. 33 ] -->

James Lashomb, professor of entomology at Rutgers University, says bedbugs are now "common" in the Garden State. "It's not widely discussed, but it's common. If you go to a backyard picnic or barbecue, they're not talking about bedbugs." He also says they've become a "very important problem" nationally and internationally.

(...)

Harold Harlan, a Maryland entomologist, knows why, since he's able to observe the thousands of bedbugs he maintains in sealed quart jars, and has been doing so for about the past 30 years. "The behavior of the bug, the fact that they're small and cryptic, and their ability to survive a long time without feeding, give them an edge over all the tools to be used against them," says Harlan, who's currently a private contractor for the Armed Forces Pest Management Board.

(...)

Adult bedbugs can live up to a year without food. They exclusively feed off blood, preferably from humans, but also the blood of other warm-blooded animals such as birds, rodents, pets and bats. Plus, they're nocturnal little things. They come out to feed at night, usually when people are asleep. "They come and feed and leave you, and go back to their hiding places," says Cooper. [Richard Cooper of Cooper Pest Solutions of Lawrenceville, NJ.]

(...)

Cooper says bedbugs "disburse widely throughout a dwelling" - in the mattress, box spring, headboard, foot board and beyond to nightstands, end tables, any kind of furniture, behind picture frames, in seams and crevices, under screw holes, inside cracks in window frames, baseboard moldings, crown moldings and cracks in wooden floors. If you find you do have a bedbug infestation, be prepared for battle and don't think you're going to get the job done in a day. Bedbugs aren't seasonal creatures, and it takes about a month and a half for the egg to develop into an adult. You may find you've wiped out the adult population only to discover another generation has since hatched in your house-hold. Joan estimates her home's infestation cost the family roughly $1,500 to $2,000. This included, in part, the three visits from their West Orange exterminator and money spent to hot launder all of her son's clothing and cloth items, including curtains, in his bedroom at home. She also thoroughly vacuumed their home every day and disposed of the vacuum bag each time. In addition, her husband sealed all of their son's bedroom furniture in plastic and carried it out to the garage to spend the winter, and they hoped the freezing temperatures would kill off any remaining bed bugs."You need 55 days of bug-free, bite-free time to know the problem's been resolved," says Cooper.

The use of ineffective pesticides, as those approved by the EPA, increases the number of visits to remove bedbugs and tremendously adds to the expense of the removal. The EPA's approach is not cost-effective.

Perhaps if Lisa Jackson were to spend a night in a bedbug infested environment, her environmental policy might change.

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I'm a patent lawyer located in central New Jersey. I have a J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where I studied graphite intercalation compounds at the Center for Materials Research. I worked at Exxon Corporate Research in areas ranging from engine deposits through coal and petroleum to fullerenes. An article that I wrote in The Trademark Reporter, 1994, 84, 379-407 on color trademarks was cited by Supreme Court in Qualitex v. Jacobson, 514 US 159 (1995) and the methodology was adopted
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